Cadillac Deville Concours Vs. Lincoln Town Car Touring Sedan

American Luxury Sedans With A Sporty Attitude

At the stoplight, you catch the side glance of the shifty-eyed '66 Mustang driver in the next lane. Why, that impertinent lightweight is sizing you up! Quickly mute the Mozart CD. Yes, now you can hear his furtive attempt to quietly bring his revs up for a jump on you. Aahh, but the joke's on him.

Carefully, you tuck your silk hanky back into your breast pocket and holster your jar of Grey Poupon in one of the cupholders. Little Mr. Hood Stripes is about to be put in his place. Color this Caddy 0-60 mph in 6.9 seconds; the Lincoln in 7.9 seconds. Not too long ago, those would've been musclecar numbers. True, very few '98 Lincoln Town Car Touring Sedans or Cadillac DeVille Concours will ever be involved in a wheel-spinning stoplight duel. Still, who doesn't like a tad more twist for the occasional quick move in traffic? And should one of those sordid wheel-to-wheel encounters occur, the outcome will no longer be so sure for the road-going rabble.We took an instrumented look at the powertrains, platforms, chassis pieces, styling, and on-road behavior of these performance-tuned bronto-luxo-saurs. The results held some interesting surprises and dispelled some of our long-held beliefs about big, domestic, luxury sedans.

The completely restyled Lincoln Town Car remains true to its full-frame, rear-drive heritage. This is a chassis architecture that usually favors quietude and road isolation far above sporting requirements for steering or handling. But for '98, the spicy Touring Sedan version of the Town Car features 20 more horses than the plain-vanilla Town Car, a host of powertrain smoothness tweaks, a stronger frame, larger front brakes, sporting mono-tube shocks, higher-rate springs, bigger anti-roll bars, upgraded wheels and tires, and a new Watts linkage on the live axle.The Cadillac Concours rides on one of a new generation of premium GM unibody, front-drive platforms. The design brings to this comparison the leading edge in steel monocoque construction with rubber-isolated steel subframes, electronically controlled shock damping, and hydraulic engine mounts. And although the Concours struggles at times to match the Town Car in terms of ultimate ride smoothness, it carries a large, front-drive traction advantage when roads are slippery or icy; plus its driving feel is subjectively nimbler around town.

Who says Big Cars Can't Jump?One mash of the throttle proves that the Concours is quite clearly the hot rod in this heavyweight square-off. Both V-8 engines displace 4.6 liters, but the power levels (and the personalities) are wildly different. The reason is better breathing. Cadillac's Northstar has a DOHC valvetrain with a total of 32 valves. The Lincoln engine is an SOHC design with 16 valves. The GM engine makes 300 ready horsepower and 295 pound-feet of torque at 4400 rpm. The Town Car's 4.6 generates a smooth 220 horses at 4500 and a respectable 275 pound-feet at 3500.Never underestimate the part that a sweet-shifting transmission plays in your overall impression of a powertrain's performance. This is particularly true in a luxury sedan. When GM's 4T80-E four-speed automatic transaxle was introduced in 1993, it, along with the Northstar V-8, completely changed domestic and even expensive import-car benchmarks for slick and silent ratio changes. And frankly, Ford lagged far behind in its luxury-car shift quality. But without question, this new Lincoln's 4R70W four-speed auto has been to torque-management charm school. The individual shifts are barely perceptible.Don't forget the Luxury RideSuperior road-noise attenuation, body isolation, and low wind noise are hallmarks of a luxury sedan. In this battle, it's the Lincoln's reengineered body-on-frame design, all-new greenhouse, and rear air suspension versus the Cad's modern unibody and shock-damping suspension electronics.